Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/203

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as in that of Sesshu and Sotatsu and a few others, the artists never speak in pictures except by the words of silence.

There are many people who think that modern personality is more or less a creation of audacity; I have a reason or two to think it a burden. Permit me to say that to have no personality at all in the present age is really to have a great personality.

Truth is that we Japanese lack in curiosity; therefore we are not inventive, creative, but merely imitative.

Present Japan is a sad mixture of bad action and good intention as if we say bad painting and good purpose for art. We are fooling ourselves when we’ say that we are having the best age of long history to-day.

Trouble is that we have Japan, true to say, but no Japanese, in the sense that there are Russians but not Russia. Indeed we lost our own individuality in thinking much of the nation.

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